A Matter of Honor

Chapter Thirty-nine

The airport at Frankfurt had been a maelstrom of confusion, hundreds of passengers hurrying in every direction toward the more than fifty international airline terminals that left from the aerodrome. The city itself, rebuilt from World War II rubble in neomodern style, was a sprawl of blocky concrete in the late afternoon light. As Lasari looked down from the plane window, the movement of cars and autobahns below spent spasms of nausea through his body, and when the plane passed over the broad band of the River Main reflections from the water sent slices of pain through his eyeballs. He would like to have shaded his eyes, tried to sleep, but he was hoping for at least a glimpse of the Am-Main Military Hospital. General Weir had been flown there from Ludensdorf in a military transport, John Grimes had told him.

Their conversation had been brief, a collect call made to the Tarbert Weir home outside Springfield from a phone booth in the airport. Even in the privacy of the booth Lasari had talked urgently, a hand cupped around his mouth and his back to the shuffle of traffic passing the glass door.

He had asked first about the general. “He’s holding his own,” Grimes had said.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, he’s not up to that yet. A doctor called.”

“What do you think, Mr. Grimes?”

“He’s got the constitution of a horse, always had.”

Lasari hesitated a moment. The connection was good, Grimes’ voice was clear, but Lasari had the impression that someone might be listening in on the line, at the Springfield end. It was not a noise that alerted him but rather a feeling of presence, the silence of breath being withheld.

“Is it safe to talk, Mr. Grimes?”

“Shoot, fellow. Say what you’ve got to say,” the man said. “I’ve been expecting some sort of instructions from the general. He gave me a rough idea what he was up to.”

Lasari gave Grimes the number of the Lufthansa flight, his arrival time in Chicago and a description of the single item he would be carrying. And then he gave him General Weir’s instructions about Sergeant Gordon and General Stigmuller.

“I have their numbers,” Grimes said, his voice suddenly hard. “I’ll tell them what the general wants them to know.” He broke the connection.

Before entering the waiting area for his flight, Lasari stood to one side and watched as passengers were guided through the metal detectors used to search out concealed weapons. On a moving belt attendants arranged hand luggage to pass through a separate detector, to be picked up on the other side of the barrier.

Two minutes before flight time he handed his duffel to an attendant and walked through the detector arches. A variety of luggage moved past him before he saw his duffel emerging on the belt. He stepped over to pick it up, as casual as any other traveler, then blended into the line of passengers holding boarding passes.

Sergeant Karl Malleck had rung for fresh coffee. Since five o’clock he had been out of bed and restless. With the business on schedule, it was too early for whiskey, yet he desperately needed a pickup. The waiting, the goddam silence, the creaking floors, the smells of the horse stalls that became miasmic in the damp — it was all getting on his nerves. He needed someone to talk to.

When Private Andrew Scales came in with the tray Malleck thought of sending him back for another cup. Instead he said sharply, “You been checking up on your mailbox regularly, Scales?”

“Yes, sir,” the black man said. “I goes over every two days or so.”

“You know I don’t want those pickup notices lying around any longer than absolutely necessary.”

Scales responded with a nervous chuckle. “No, sir, Top, I’m on the ball. I’m as worried as you are to pick up Uncle Andy’s presents.”

Malleck looked at Scales, experiencing a sharp distaste, not because the man was black, not because he stood there shuffling like some back-country Jim Crow, but because he was so dumb; because in a society where he’d been ass-kicked since day one, in a world where his only pleasure came from a needle, he was still dumb enough to take on worries for somebody else.

“You know what I’m really waiting for, Scales. The golden goose is coming in for a landing.” He looked at his watch. “That fucker Salmi is late again. His wife says he’s having stomach troubles, but I told him to get in here today.”

“He’ll be round, sarge, he’s a good man.”

“Well, you go out front and wait for him, Scales. Get him in here. And tell me the minute Neal and Castana pull into the courtyard.”

“I can watch good from my window, sarge. It’s raining outside.”

“So what, so what, Scales? You never been wet before? Take a broom, sweep off the steps or something. If there’s one thing I hate more than a dumb nigger, it’s a lazy nigger.”

Lasari fell in line behind several civilians at the farthest customs counter, where the queue was shorter. He gave the uniformed official his customs slip checked Nothing to Declare, then swung the duffel up on the counter.

“... just one more GI on leave, carrying regulation duffel, rightsize, right weight, right initials, right ID number,” Sergeant Strasser had said. The customs official was young, Lasari noticed, probably not much older than he was, with a name tag, Kelsey, pinned to his twill pocket, “... customs does want to look at your gear, all they see is a couple of presents for the girl friend back home and a few changes of Army underwear.”

Kelsey unzipped the bag, looked inside, ran a hand through the garments and closed it again. He made a chalk mark on the canvas and pushed the bag toward Lasari. “Welcome home, soldier,” he said.

Before the two big MPs fell into step with him, Lasari was aware of someone else who seemed to have him under observation, a traveler in well-tailored clothes and carrying a briefcase, a middle-aged black man with skin the color of light soot and lips that were almost purple. But when Joe Castana and Eddie Neal came out of the crowd to walk on either side of Lasari, the black man disappeared. Both men were in uniform with shiny boots and MP armbands on their sleeves.

“You’re looking downright sickly, Jackson,” Eddie Neal said. “You look like a bone the dogs worked over.”

By the sheer bulk and press of their bodies the two men guided Lasari away from the main airport lobby and toward a side door leading to a maintenance parking lot.

“Don’t try to run, Jackson,” Neal said. “We’re both armed.”

“Run? He’s too scared to run,” Castana said. “He don’t even ask questions. He even try to speak, he’d be spittin’ cotton.”

Lasari’s eyes swept the maintenance area, not knowing what to expect but determined to be ready for it if he saw it. A chain-link fence, twelve feet high and topped with coils of barbed wire, circled the lot. A dozen or more employees’ cars were parked in a row, as well as one long limo with shaded, opaque windows, several baggage carts, and a pair of food and beverage trucks jacked up for repair. Four employees in airlines overalls were tinkering with the mechanism of a moveable staircase.

Parked in a far corner of the yard, near an exit gate, was an Army vehicle with a jeep understructure, high wheels and a windowless van body on top. Lasari knew that was where they were heading.

He felt a sudden urge to pray, to make a bargain with God, promise some contribution or sacrifice so difficult or stunning it would attract divine attention even down to this remote maintenance lot. As a boy in North Carolina he had often bargained with some imagined heavenly being for good grades in school, or a day at the circus by promising to rake the yard or paint a shed without being asked. Down in the minor leagues, in the swamp country of Florida he had once offered to do a hundred pushups before breakfast, every day, all season, in return for a good batting average. In Vietnam he had used pain as barter, offering to take any and all suffering without recrimination or complaint if only he was allowed to live.

But now, walking across the macadam, with the two MPs so close that he could feel the warmth of their bodies, Lasari thought with desperation that he had nothing left to bargain with, nothing at all to offer a watchful or caring God. He was a two-time deserter carrying an illegal cache of heroin, walking under armed guard across an airport lot, a man with no job, no money and no future.

But suddenly he became aware of the parts of a picture for which he had been searching. A stocky man in a tweed jacket and leather gloves was standing outside an open gate, not far from the Army jeep. The man was not coming closer, but he was not walking away. John Grimes... And the four maintenance men had completed repairs on the staircase and were pushing it in front of them, bending their backs to the task, covering Lasari from the rear.

A flash of hope lit his thoughts, he knew what he could bargain with, and made a silent promise more important to himself than to God. “Let me out of this,” he prayed, “save me one more time, and I will go to her and ask her and love her for the rest of my life.”

Suddenly a door of the parked limo opened and the black man with the briefcase stepped out, holding a gun this time, shouting, “Hold it, gentlemen! I’ll take that baggage now.”

As the black man stepped forward, John Grimes dashed in the gate, arms high over his head. Joe Castana made a dive to wrest the bag from Lasari’s grip, and the black man fired a shot that caught Castana in the wrist and jolted him out of the way. Lasari swung the bag in a looping arc toward Grimes.

The men in maintenance uniforms sprang forward with drawn guns, and one shouted, “Chicago police officers! Freeze!”

One officer tackled the black gunman from behind, knocked the revolver from his hand, spinning him around to sprawl face downward on the hood of the limousine.

Eddie Neal shoved Lasari aside and with a bellow of rage threw himself forward to seize the duffel bag, but Grimes was ready. He swung his boot in a powerful upward kick, catching Neal in the chest and sending him back on the macadam, stunned and lighting for breath.

Joe Castana was rocking on his knees, cursing through clenched teeth, trying to hold his shattered wrist together with his good hand.

“Take your man and split, Grimes!” one of the police officers shouted, and Grimes swung the duffel into the cab of the Army vehicle and signaled to Lasari.

“You’d better know where we’re going, soldier,” he said. “I never drove in this town in my life.”

Private Scales had finished cleaning off the steps in front of the Armory. The rain was now hardly more than a mist, and he began to sweep the wet cobblestones of the courtyard itself, never lifting his eyes from his work as he edged himself toward the open front gate and street. He paused there, wiped his wet face with a khaki handkerchief and looked up and down the street. There was only the normal early morning traffic, no strange cars parked in either direction, but his attention was caught by three men standing in the doorway of a warehouse near the corner and three others, in civilian clothes, sauntering in the rain half a block away.

The sight of the strangers brought no surprise to Scales, only a feeling of deep melancholy and a decision that had been hiding in his subconscious for some months. He knew he wasn’t going to tell Malleck anything this time.

One of the men at the warehouse was familiar to him. He had seen him twice before, at Cabrini Green, in uniform then, relentless, going from building to building, checking, rechecking, asking questions. There had been a lot of uniforms at the Green since Malleck ordered that lieutenant wasted, but this one Scales remembered most clearly. He was black and his face seemed more bitter and dangerous than all the others.

As Scales walked back over the courtyard he saw Malleck standing at the window, watching him. He waved and called out, “You just rest yourself, sarge. I’m watchin’ for you.”

At that moment Malleck spotted the Army vehicle as it slowed at the front gate and turned into the courtyard with a screech of rubber. And right on plan there were two men in the front seat.

A surge of relief swept through the sergeant’s body, so rousing and satisfying that he felt as if he had had a sexual catharsis. His legs, then his torso trembled with an emotion so violent that he had to sit down. It was going to happen, the matching condos, the sea breezes, the choice of broads, the numbered bank accounts. Sergeant Malleck, Mr. Karl Malleck, was definitely going to be a rich and envied man. He folded his hands to control the shaking, fixed his eyes on the main entrance to his office, and waited.

He waited several minutes and though the delay was not long enough to cause alarm, Malleck was taken by surprise when the door to Scales’ cubicle opened and Durham Lasari stepped into the room. He was in uniform, his face pale and expressionless, but his eyes were dark with derision.

He gave Malleck a snappy salute and said, “Private George Jackson reporting, sir. Private George Jackson making delivery.”

Lasari took three steps toward the desk, duffel bag in hand, and then Malleck gasped with disbelief as he saw three men with drawn guns and Private Andrew Scales step into the room directly behind Lasari.

“Sergeant Malleck, I am Sergeant Gordon of the Chicago Police Department,” a big black man said. “You are under arrest.”

“Goddamn it, Scales,” Malleck shouted, his voice almost breaking. “What the hell is this...”

With a panicked reflex he opened a desk drawer and found a gun. As he raised it, there was a sharp pop in the air, the sound of a single shot from an automatic pistol with a silencer, and Malleck’s body jerked once, then spun around and he fell face downward on the rug, his gun falling from his hand.

He looked almost graceful as he lay there, head resting on one arm as though trying to sleep, but there was blood on the rug beside him and a perfect curve of mandible bone that had fragmented when Scales’ bullet had shattered his jaw.

“You fucking idiot!” Sergeant Gordon said with fury as he snatched Scales’ gun from his hand. “You had my orders, all of you. This was to be a lawful, a peaceful bust. We needed that man, we wanted him alive.”

“You don’t understand, boss,” Scales said. “It had to be this way. Sergeant Malleck and I, we been together a long, long time. We’re something special. He’d of wanted me to do it for him, I know that.”

Lasari set the duffel bag on a chair, as though it had become repugnant to him. Sergeant Gordon nodded and one of the plainclothes officers stepped over to claim it.

“I’m not sure what happens from here on,” Lasari said. “Tell me, am I under arrest, Sergeant Gordon?”

“More or less protective custody, Mr. Lasari, like that shit we just confiscated.”